In most cities, a building such as The Tower would have been impossibly imposing.

  In New York, it barely even registered … when viewed from street level, at least. Considering its height, it was likely quite the striking figure when viewed from above, but the only people who flew anymore were those who could do so under their own power, and those who travelled long distances too often to rely solely on Fast Travel.

  All told, he’d already set up just about everything that bore setting up. Enrollment, figuring out where to go, and finally, arranging a meeting with his curriculum advisor, a “Mr. Thornton.”

  But since he might get lost, he still arrived almost an hour early anyway.

  The lowest few floors of The Tower were old, far older than even the [System], once upon a time having been the New York public library. But just looking at it, you’d never know the towering edifice had once been much less, uh, tower.

  Stone carvings, designs oddly reminiscent of both Gothic and Ancient Greek architecture, ran the entirety of its height, the designer of the addition having integrated the new parts so well that Derek found himself genuinely unable to distinguish the old from the new.

  Beautiful, imposing, and oh so enticing.

  After craning his neck and staring up the wall for a good minute, he marched in, finding himself quickly navigating the well-labeled building. Now this was how proper signage worked!

  Not like that one time his school class had gone on a field trip to the local university and the teacher gotten hopelessly lost because the chemistry building had reused room numbers for each separate specialty, resulting in their knowing they needed to go to “lab number three” being worse than useless. So much for “German efficiency” …

  But that wasn’t an issue here, and that was how Derek found himself in front of the open door to the office he’d been searching for far too early.

  “Come in,” a booming voice called even as he was just making up his mind about what to do. And seeing as there wasn’t anyone else in sight, Derek figured that had been aimed at him.

  The inside of the office was similarly old-fashioned as the street outside had been, though it certainly did seem to be more functional.

  Desk, bookshelf, computer with a screen clearly designed to be swiveled so as to be easily viewable from either side of the table, couple of knick-nacks indicating personality on the desk and on a wall shelf, which also held a couple of jars of cookies, a coffee machine, and a series of mugs bearing the name of the school in an elaborate font.

  All told, it looked nice.

  When Derek entered, the chair in front of the desk slid back, moved by an invisible hand, an unmistakable invitation to sit down. So he did.

  And Mr. Thornton, sitting behind the desk, clearly his curriculum advisor, flashed him a big, gregarious smile.

  “Mr. Thoma, I can see here that you’ve already graduated from Seoul Academy with solid grades. What precisely brings you to The Tower? We offer a variety of full degrees, individual courses, individualized courses, and if you just want an appropriate certificate, we also give those out … as long as you can prove you’re qualified, of course.”

  Derek raised an eyebrow. That sounded almost like he could just buy the certifications the academy offered.

  “How exactly do these certificates work, then?” he asked. “What exactly are the standards?”

  Because if they were any less than the requirements for actual coursework, while giving the impression that one had, in fact, graduated … honestly, that was just plain nasty.

  “Higher than those for regular graduation,” Thornton stated bluntly. “You’ll have to show you can meet the requirements of a normal graduate, as well as prove several additional qualifications that vary from the exact certificate you want. As you know, The Tower has an excellent reputation, and certain employers consider any certification not issued by us as being untrustworthy, even if all we do is reaffirm that someone is as good as they’d be if they’d studied with us, rather than where they actually went.”

  So, how did this work, then? Simply getting his capabilities rubber-stamped was pointless, after all, he was here to learn, but now he found himself morbidly curious.

  “And how much would that ‘certificate’ cost, then?” Derek asked, getting an answer that then prompted a whole flurry of follow-up questions until he was, two minutes later, finally aware of the fact that a certificate that took a few hours to get cost nearly a third of a semester’s tuition.

  A money grab, apparently. Hell, considering how harsh American capitalism often was, it wouldn’t surprise him if “only our certification is worth the paper it’s printed on” was a slogan proudly proclaimed to anyone who might fall for it. Or maybe Derek was just stuck in outdated stereotypes about the cost-benefit ratio of American education.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Either way, if it weren’t for this place’s reputation, he’d likely be halfway out the door already …

  “I’m coming to this academy with specific goals in mind, and I need a plan that will let me meet them. Can you help me with that?”

  “Sure, I just need to know what those are.”

  Derek quickly explained his “goals,” the ones seen as mere pipe dreams by far too many others, as well as the focus he’d like his education to have, specifically, magic. And then he rattled off what his bloodline could do, at least the relevant bits, which was mostly just the hellfire.

  “Hm …” Thornton finally responded, rubbing his chin. “It’s ambitious, I’ll tell you that, but you probably already know that. I genuinely don’t know if you’ll be able to pull it off, but I think working on flashruning might give you the best chance.”

  “Fleshruning?” Derek asked. That didn’t sound good.

  “No, flash,” Thornton corrected, turning in his chair to grab a piece of paper out of his printer and then holding it between them. “You create runes in seconds using elemental abilities, producing what, in effect, boils down to an instant runic enchantment, or perhaps a spell.”

  As he spoke, parts of the paper began to darken, as though he were holding it far too close to a flame, charring runes into bleached food fibres, but just as it seemed to be on the verge of bursting into flame, the spell that he was burning into existence triggered, unleashing a wave of cold air that swept through the small room.

  “Considering that you wield hellfire, I think it will be a real challenge to burn runes into something as fragile and inherently flammable as paper.”

  And therefore highly rewarding if he managed it.

  “Furthermore, learning to create your own designs for this process should be a worthwhile application of what you learned in Seoul. And if I’m reading your transcript correctly, you focused on mana efficiency over control with regards to your hellfire.

  “Now, if you’re looking to improve your combat capabilities, that’s the right decision; you want to be able to do as much damage as possible with the mana you have.

  “However, if you want a hard challenge to overcome, have you tried forming complex shapes? The kinds that hellfire wouldn’t naturally take and certainly not stay in without a lot of effort, and it would all have to be done before your mana runs out, that would likely mean …” Thornton cocked his head to the side. “Little over a second, by my guess. Like mana control exercises, with a far more volatile energy, and on a strict time limit.”

  That sounded interesting.

  “Shapes like what?” Derek asked.

  Thornton held up a hand and, above his palm, a burning rose manifested, or at least that was what it seemed to be, the general shape and presence of thorns enough for Derek to guess what it was supposed to be, but it was far from perfect …

  And then it began to change, tightening, reshaping itself, even changing color to form a perfect flower floating in midair above the desk, not even radiating any heat yet perfectly displaying every single petal, every single thorn, every single vein that would have traced the leaves of a normal plant.

  Derek raised his hand to try it himself, yet before he could conjure even a single spark, Thornton looked scandalized.

  “No hellfire in here, please.”

  Derek froze for a brief moment, then lowered his hand back into his lap.

  “Isn’t this place warded?”

  “Not for hellfire it isn’t. I’m the only one who’s allowed make flames in here, because I can control them.”

  Really?

  “What about the classrooms?” Derek asked.

  “The classrooms are warded to survive attacks well beyond anything you or even I can conjure, as is the building itself. But no one wards …” Thornton gestured around. “… the stationary or powerwork.”

  Oh, that made more sense.

  “Also, I’d like to take classes related to extraterrestrial work, assuming you offer those,” Derek suggested.

  “Well, it’s certainly not our specialty,” Thornton admitted. “But we do have some, and a few more specifically about magic that’s useful up there. You won’t get as much out of the latter as others since you aren’t leveling yet, so you can’t learn spells, but you should be able to get some use out of it.”

  And then, Derek made his final request.

  “How hard would it be to get a private room to …” he trailed off, suddenly realizing his originally intended phrasing had a high likelihood for misunderstandings. “To experiment in, whenever I want, for as long as it takes, without getting in anyone’s way.”

  “Well, that’s going to be expensive,” Thornton pointed out.

  “Expensive as in the cost being the unfortunate consequence of appropriate pricing, or expensive as in ‘we jacked up the price as far as we felt we could get away with, then doubled it’?” Derek asked. While the money he had access to was both insufficient to buy a proper starship and overall limited, unless the price was utterly beyond the pale, he’d be able to fund his education. After all, that was why he had partial access to family funds in the first place.

  “Everything is appropriately priced; however, even the simplest room like that has enough features to be quite costly.”

  “Do you have a list?” Derek sighed, bracing himself to be confronted with amounts that went well beyond what he could spend without explaining himself …

  In the end though, he wound up selecting a mid-range, averagely priced room that came with a warded desk he could stick his notes on, as well as keep spare sheets of paper because even if this whole thing was only a fraction as difficult as it seemed, he’d still be blowing them up by the thousands, and it would be optimal if he could keep spares within reach, rather than needing to leave the room to retrieve each individual sheet.

  And he hadn’t left the office for even five minutes when his phone dinged to inform him of the fact that his lesson plan had been finished, complete with a strategy for time optimization when practicing magic, including the idea to drink mana potions just before he finished for the day, allowing him to practice for an extended period, then leave and have the corrosponding reduction in mana regeneration affect him at a time when he didn’t actually matter.

  Derek felt his mouth twist into something halfway between a grin and a grimace.

  Magic theory, elemental theory, enchanting theory, runes, runic application, elementalism in practice … almost everything he’d just heaped onto his plate would be long, theoretical, and exhausting.

  Yet at the same time, wasn’t keeping this shit up for the rest of the decade he’d settled on as a deadline worthy of something?